Career Services
Intensive Search

You must search with intensitybecause career planning is often difficult. It is difficult, but it is worth it. Simply put, career planning is difficult because it requires you to achieve a great deal of self-understanding and practical knowledge. Consider:

Career planning makes you question who you want to be

Career planning includes both big questions of what’s important to you, and a practical cost-benefit analysis

Career planning calls on you to predict the future of your life’s work

Nonetheless, you can navigate your career path successfully by making a few key decisions, based on simple ideas and concepts, and use all the resources available to you. Your goal should be to choose a career that gets you excited to go to work every day.

Ask yourself:

What energizes you? People get their energy from different types of activities, situations, and strengths. If you are energized working with people, but spend most of your work life working independently, you are unlikely to be fulfilled.

What do others say you should do? Listen to others, because they can see talents and possibilities in you that you may not have considered. But don't allow others to make decisions for you. It is your life.

What do you value? If your work does not reflect your personal values, it will not be a good fit. Pursue a calling, where the contribution you make helps solve problems you find important.

MEET WITH A CAREER ADVISOR to help you start making connections and guide you through a career discernment process.

TAKE A STRENGTHS INVENTORY, along with other inventories, to discover more about yourself. Follow up by meeting with a Career Advisor at the Schroeder Center. These inventories are helpful tools enabling you make important connections, but they cannot tell you who you are.

StrengthsQuest helps you build on what you do best in your personal, academic, and professional pursuits; contact us for a free inventory

Profile and explore career interests with the O*Net Interest Profiler, a powerful tool for identifying some specific career possibilities

The Life Values Inventory can help give some insight into your concrete values and a way of expressing them more broadly

INVESTIGATE YOUR MAJOR. Realize that in most cases related to a career path it does not matter what you major in. It matters much more that you select a major that fits your strengths, values, and interests, and that you build skills through additional internships or other experiential learning. Some career paths do require specific courses (accounting for accountants, computer science for programmers, science coursework for pre-health), but a tiny minority call for specific majors. Bottom line: a theater major can become a judge; a religion major can become a political analyst; a history major can become a financial analyst; an art major can become a CEO.

EXPERIMENT WITH CAREER TEST DRIVES. Career Test Drives are the easiest, most accessible ways to find exciting new directions your career development could go in. Make it a goal to do one per semester, especially as a freshman and sophomore.

PURSUE YOUR CALLING. The Wabash Callings program helps students seek lives of purpose and fulfillment. Watch for special events to discern a calling more fully, or join the Callings student group Quests and Questions to take part in a group dedicated answering tough questions about where they are going in life.